IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/3263.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Can Direct and Indirect Taxes Be Added for International Comparisons of Competitiveness?

Author

Listed:
  • Hans-Werner Sinn

Abstract

While it is usually argued that direct and indirect taxes should be added for meaningful international comparisons of country competitiveness, this paper argues that the opposite may be true. It is possible that a country with a high value-added tax needs a high capital income tax to maintain its international competitiveness and vice verca. Which view is correct depends on which combination of the origin, destination, source and residence principles' prevail and whether or not accelerated depreciation is allowed. Using a Heckscher-Ohlin model with international capital movements the paper studies the relevant alternatives in detail.

Suggested Citation

  • Hans-Werner Sinn, 1990. "Can Direct and Indirect Taxes Be Added for International Comparisons of Competitiveness?," NBER Working Papers 3263, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:3263
    Note: PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w3263.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mutti, John & Grubert, Harry, 1985. "The taxation of capital income in an open economy: the importance of resident-nonresident tax treatment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(3), pages 291-309, August.
    2. Sutton, John, 1976. "The Relative Factor Intensities of Investment-and Consumer-Goods Industries: A Note," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 44(4), pages 819-821, July.
    3. Whalley, John, 1979. "Uniform domestic tax rates, trade distortions and economic integration," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 11(2), pages 213-221, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Andreas Haufler, 1996. "Optimal factor and commodity taxation in a small open economy," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 3(3), pages 425-442, July.
    2. De Bonis, Valeria, 1997. "Regional integration and factor income taxation," Policy Research Working Paper Series 1849, The World Bank.
    3. Frenkel, Jacob A & Razin, Assaf, 1987. "Fiscal Policies and the World Economy; An Intertemporal Approach (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1987)," MPRA Paper 20438, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Jacob Frenkel & Assaf Razin & Efraim Sadka, 1991. "International Taxation in an Integrated World," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262061430, December.
    5. Gordon, Roger H, 1992. "Can Capital Income Taxes Survive in Open Economies?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(3), pages 1159-1180, July.
    6. De Bonis, Valeria, 1997. "Regional integration and commodity tax harmonization," Policy Research Working Paper Series 1848, The World Bank.
    7. Genser, Bernd & Haufler, Andreas, 1996. "Tax policy and the location decision of firms," Discussion Papers, Series II 306, University of Konstanz, Collaborative Research Centre (SFB) 178 "Internationalization of the Economy".
    8. Stehn, Jürgen, 1994. "Turnover taxation in the EC: options for future reforms," Kiel Working Papers 613, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. De Bonis, Valeria, 1997. "Regional integration and factor income taxation," Policy Research Working Paper Series 1849, The World Bank.
    2. Haufler, Andreas, 1991. "Alternative tax principles for the European Community: A computable general equilibrium comparison," Discussion Papers, Series II 151, University of Konstanz, Collaborative Research Centre (SFB) 178 "Internationalization of the Economy".
    3. Buiter, Willem H., 2017. "Exchange rate implications of Border Tax Adjustment neutrality," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 11, pages 1-41.
    4. Ben Lockwood & John Whalley, 2010. "Carbon‐motivated Border Tax Adjustments: Old Wine in Green Bottles?," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(6), pages 810-819, June.
    5. Fullerton, Don & Metcalf, Gilbert E., 2002. "Tax incidence," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 26, pages 1787-1872, Elsevier.
    6. Bernd Genser & Andreas Haufler, 1996. "Tax competition, tax coordination and tax harmonization: The effects of EMU," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 23(1), pages 59-89, February.
    7. Ligthart, J.E., 2004. "Consumption Taxation in a Digital World : A Primer," Other publications TiSEM 46537bf7-4822-4dbe-b3fa-f, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    8. Mare, Mauro, 2015. "Why and How should the EU budget be reformed?," MPRA Paper 76112, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Lockwood, Ben, 2001. "Tax competition and tax co-ordination under destination and origin principles: a synthesis," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(2), pages 279-319, August.
    10. LI, Chunding & WHALLEY, John, 2012. "Rebalancing and the Chinese VAT: Some numerical simulation results," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 23(2), pages 316-324.
    11. Sheldon, Ian M., 2010. "Climate Policy and Border Tax Adjustments: Some New Wine Mixed with Old Wine in New Green Bottles?," Estey Centre Journal of International Law and Trade Policy, Estey Centre for Law and Economics in International Trade, vol. 11(1), pages 1-27, May.
    12. Søren Nielsen, 1992. "Capital income taxation in a growing world economy," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 55(1), pages 77-99, February.
    13. Yan Dong & John Whalley, 2010. "Carbon, Trade Policy and Carbon Free Trade Areas," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(9), pages 1073-1094, September.
    14. Michael Kouparitsas & Dinar Prihardini & Alexander Beames, 2016. "Analysis of the long term effects of a company tax cut," Treasury Working Papers 2016-02, The Treasury, Australian Government, revised May 2016.
    15. Lawrence H. Goulder & Barry Eichengreen, 1989. "Savings Promotion, Investment Promotion, and International Competitiveness," NBER Chapters, in: Trade Policies for International Competitiveness, pages 5-52, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Carol McAusland & Nouri Najjar, 2015. "Carbon Footprint Taxes," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 61(1), pages 37-70, May.
    17. Thomas Brasch & Ivan Frankovic & Eero Tölö, 2023. "Corporate taxes and investment when firms are internationally mobile," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 30(5), pages 1297-1330, October.
    18. Liu, Li & Altshuler, Rosanne, 2013. "Measuring the Burden of the Corporate Income Tax Under Imperfect Competition," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 66(1), pages 215-237, March.
    19. Clarete, Ramon & Whalley, John, 1996. "Border tax adjustments and rationed foreign exchange," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 51(3), pages 331-337, June.
    20. Nadja Dwenger & Pia Rattenhuber & Viktor Steiner, 2019. "Sharing the Burden? Empirical Evidence on Corporate Tax Incidence," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 20(4), pages 107-140, November.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:3263. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.